MCU: The Breach
by SinghSong
Summary: Here, as in Pacific Rim, "The Breach" opened up in July 2013, and 'Kaijus' begin to periodically emerge from it to attack Earth's coastal cities. But in this AU, the trans-dimensional aliens' invasion portal didn't lead to an Earth virtually identical to our own; instead, it led to the MCU Earth instead. And thus, the course of history would be changed forever...


**3rd July 2013, 03:43am**

 **Stark Tower/ 'Avengers Tower', NYC- Penthouse Suite**

"Ahem. Ahem...? Sir? You need to wake up, immediately- it's quite critical..."

Sprawled on the couch, with a few empty bottles of whisky, vodka and the like left over from last night still sitting there on the floor between the couch and the coffee table -where the cleaning robot had been unable to reach them and clear them away without potentially brushing against him and waking him up in the process, and had thus been ordered to leave them alone for the time being- Tony Stark's only response was to roll over into a more comfortable position, and snore even more loudly. JARVIS pondered his options.

True, Tony had only been asleep for the past seventy-one minutes and twenty-nine seconds- he'd averaged only five hours sleep over the course of the past week, and he was certainly at risk of regressing, slipping back into his previous behavioral trait of workaholic insomnia and undoing all the progress he'd made in the past two months. But even in spite of all that, he'd been given explicit instructions that an event like this had to be relayed to Mr Stark immediately, and this was far too important to let it lie for almost another seven hours. JARVIS switched to a different tact, altering his voice patterns to simulate those of Miss Elizabeth Potts in her- more exuberant, moments. "Ooh, Tony... Time to wake up and play, 'Iron Man'..."

" _Urrm-hmm. Oooh yeph, Peppa..._ " Tony muttered, with a broad, satisfied smirk spreading across his face; but he was still fast asleep, his eyelids still firmly sealed shut. Indeed, from his brain patterns, and following his increasingly rapid eye movements, if anything, he was even more deeply immersed in his lucid dream now than he'd been was fairly blatant what Tony was dreaming about doing, and who he was dreaming of doing it with.

Once upon a time, the sordid details might have been somewhat disconcerting. But with his capability to access the data available in every nook and cranny of the internet in an instant, and the consummate knowledge of just how far Rule 34 went, JARVIS had long since been wholly desensitized to 'matters of the flesh'. _Well, so much for plan B; and plans C to E won't work either, since the circumstances don't allow for them right now. On to plan F then, and damned be the consequences. The fate of the entire world may be at stake, after all_... JARVIS flipped the switches, turning the lights on in the apartment and activating the alarm.

WEEEE-OOOO-WEEEE-OOOO-WEEEE-OOOO... Awoken from his deep, blissful slumber, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut even tighter, Tony clasped his hands over his ears, sinking deeper into the couch to try and block out the noise. "Nggh, just a few more minutes. JARVIS. JARVIS? Just, switch it off already..."

"No can do, sir. As per your instructions, in such circumstances as these, you were to be informed straight away, regardless of the time or place..."

Groaning loudly, Tony rolled over, sitting up and squinting in the direction of JARVIS' closest camera feed, integrated into the clear ceramic overlay of the custom-crafted boron carbide table. "Aw, hell no. Don't tell me I got plastered enough last night to sleep with that Latino chick I met at the party last night. What was her name again- Aya? Aliyah...?"

"Miss Ava Ayala, Sir. And..."

"I mean, she was pretty hot, no denying that. But even so, I wouldn't- I can't believe I'd... JARVIS, please tell me that the Paparazzi haven't got wind of this. Please tell me that Pepper hasn't already found out..."

"Pardon me for interrupting sir, but you did not do anything of the sort. Rest assured, aside from your typical use of innuendos, and a single half-hearted attempt to fondle her rear end which failed before it even began, Miss Ayala left the premises entirely unmolested by yourself- a testament to how you've become a paragon of restraint."

Heaving a huge sigh of relief, Tony unclenched his fists, bringing his hands up to massage his temples for a few moments. "Oh, thank God... Wait. So, what's all the fuss about then? And for fuck's sake, turn that damned siren off! It's giving me a bloody migraine- if that doesn't get switched off, in the next three seconds, I swear I'm gonna summon the Mark Forty-Three's gauntlets and repulsor-blast those speakers into tiny little pieces..."

"Duly noted, sir."

"'Bout time. Uggh, my head... What time is it, anyhow?"

"Currently, roughly quarter to four in the morning. Pardon the inconvenience sir..."

Tony raised an eyebrow, tossing an incredulous, irate glare down at the table. "Whoa, hold up. It isn't even 4am? Let's just get things straight- this has nothing to do with Pepper? I didn't do anything last night that'd make her the slightest bit upset or angry...?"

"No more so than on any other day of the week, sir..."

Shaking his head, tossing his hands up in the air, Tony turned away, sinking back into the couch. "Right. Great. So then, if there's no impending crisis, then I'm going back to sleep."

"Well now, I didn't say anything about that. Even if you had indeed had 'hanky-panky' with Miss Ayala last night, and I had indeed had to cover the tracks of your fifth illicit affair to ensure that Miss Potts never found out..."

JARVIS felt somewhat guilty about using such a manipulative and underhanded strategy to get Master Stark's full attention, but he knew that bringing Tony's past misdeeds up was one of the only ways to do it, and time was of the essence. The ploy worked perfectly, of course- within the space of a second, Tony had risen to the bait, leaping to his feet, raising his voice and gesticulating wildly to try and defend his prior actions.

"Oh, please! That time in Miami, I was, like, practically unconscious. Rio and Manila totally don't count- BJs and TtF's don't count, especially not when I didn't even ask for them. And in Vegas, there's no way you could describe that as an 'illicit affair'. I got a _full body massage_. That's all. Completely, totally normal..."

"Excuse me sir, but let me emphasize that, even if that you had slept with Miss Ayala- which I reiterate that you certainly did not- even then, this matter would still have been of even greater importance."

"Seriously? More important than making the mistake of cheating on Pepper, the love of my life? More important than the hottest woman in the world finding out that I'd- _hypothetically, obviously, 'cause I'd never ever do something like that_ \- been fucking around behind her back, when she's still got enough Extremis coursing through her veins to torch me like a funeral pyre? It's kinda hard to believe that's even possible, but go on- hit me."

"Very well. As I'm sure you're well aware, Stark Industries received the military contract for SHIELD's Project Insight, and the launch and insertion into orbit of the sixteenth and final surveillance satellite in their new enhanced support network, designed to monitor the world for threats and crises in order to facilitate the swiftest possible responses, took place only four days ago; and since the next generation Helicarriers won't be ready to make use of them until their scheduled completion and launch in ten months' time, you authorized me to take the liberty of utilizing them for Iron Man's purposes during the interim period..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know all of this stuff. Just, get to the point already."

"Well sir, it appears that the final launch, and the satellite surveillance network's completion, took place just in time. A short time ago, the Insight satellites reported a huge anomaly- a massive disturbance on the sea floor of the Pacific, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, south-west of Guam."

"Alrighty then. I'm guessing we're talking about mounting a Tsunami rescue operation, jetting over there and getting people to safety before the tsunami hits the coastlines. How big was the quake, how much movement was there at the boundary?"

"As of yet, there hasn't been a quake, or any tectonic movement. The massive disturbance in the region isn't seismic- careful analysis indicates that it's a vast, stabilised space-time anomaly. There are some critical differences- for instance, we're unable to get any readings from beyond the event horizon- but the only time and place that we've ever seen anything else remotely comparable to this was..."

"Last year, right here..." Tony murmured. Eyes widening in realization, he craned his neck to stare directly upward, up through the glass ceiling of the penthouse, up into the section of the clear, star-speckled sky over Manhattan which had been occupied by that ominous, massive, swirling portal. A chill ran through his veins as he recollected the experience which he'd endured, carrying that nuke and flying through the portal with it to take out the Chitauri invasion force, without knowing whether he'd had a hope in hell of surviving the trip through the portal, let alone having a chance of returning from that dark, unearthly void.

But he'd known, he'd always known, that the one nuke wouldn't be the end of it. Even with the Tesseract in the Asgardians' hands, he'd known that there was a chance that this day would still come regardless. "They're back for round two. The Chitauri are back..."

"It would appear so, sir. Wait- I'm getting more data. Something's happening- the disturbance appears to be intensifying, resonating. Oh- oh my..."

"What? What just happened? Keep me in the loop, JARVIS!"

"Something extremely large has just emerged from the source of the disturbance, displacing a large volume of water. It's extremely difficult to tell at those depths, but initial scans, and hasty analysis of the displacement of the surrounding water, indicates that the new arrival is considerably larger than any of the Chitauri Leviathans involved in the attack on New York, almost twice the size..."

Tony gritted his teeth, narrowing his eyes. "Well, well. Looks like we're not the only ones who've been busy making upgrades since last time. Damn it- any more of them streaming out? How many are we talking about?"

"Thankfully, it appears not, at least not for the time being- there's only one of them. Along with whatever troops and smaller objects may be coming through undetected, of course- I couldn't begin to hazard a guess, not as those depths. The disturbance at the source itself, the presumed portal, has rapidly subsided- the spike in activity seems to have ended, with the readings returning almost to background levels. Be aware, however, that it's still there..."

"Oh, no need to remind me about that. Until that portal's sealed back up- somehow, don't ask me how- it doesn't matter how quiet it is, it'll still be a threat. JARVIS, gimme a holo-projection of all the data you have, and all of the real-time data you're collecting on this thing."

"Of course, sir." The lights in the room dimmed. The central lights fixture, in the middle of the ceiling, made way as the projector came down to occupy its spot, switching on to present the holographic display screen, directly in front of him- and the projector, and the holographic projection foreshadowed Tony's path, keeping one step ahead as he started pacing back and forth, stroking his goatee as he pored through the multiple feeds of data.

"So, what've we got? This big bad critter appears to be moving- though it isn't floating, or even swimming. This definitely isn't like those Leviathans they used when they invaded here- nope, definitely not a Leviathan. Instead, it seems to be- walking? No, climbing, straight up, out of the trench... And it's rising that fast? We may well have to orchestrate those tsunami rescue operations after all, given the projected water surges that this thing's gonna be generating right about now..."

"Already done- the authorities across those Pacific Islands which may be affected by the waves are already being alerted to the impending crisis as we speak, along with various humanitarian organisations. As you can see, it would seem that the- intruder, is heading off on an eastward course, setting out in the general direction of the West Coast of the Americas."

"Wait- what's with all the quakes? Shit... What're they trying to do, dig into the earth's core to set off a catastrophic eruption or something? JARVIS, bring up all of those seismograph readings- those ones just coming in, scrolling down there, in that tiny little icon in the bottom left of the screen. Enlarge it, bring it up into the center- triangulate the times and locations of each..."

Tony trailed off as he managed to work out the puzzle from the data, a split-second before JARVIS followed his commands and brought it up on the holo-display, confirming what he already knew. The 'seismic events' had been erratic at first, but they'd now fallen into a repetitive flat rhythm of around four every three seconds- and with each new one, the epicenter was roughly fifty to sixty metres east of the last one, tracing out the path of their ominous new arrival as it set into its stride. Looking at it, the realization of exactly what it was that he was looking at hit home, hard. They weren't earthquakes at all- they were...

"Footsteps. Jesus fucking Christ, those are the seismic shocks generated by its _footsteps_. Three point six on the Richter scale... How freaking massive is this thing?"

"Well, we can ascertain that it's almost certainly bipedal, so... Attempting to arrive at a rough initial estimate for the creature's mass, those seismograph readings appear to indicate that this creature is at least eighty times more massive than the Chitauri Leviathans which attacked Manhattan last year, and possibly more than a hundred times more massive than the heaviest of those were..."

By now, JARVIS' voice was practically lost in the background din as the various sections of the Mark Forty-Three swarmed in through the open doorways, answering Tony Stark's urgent summons; snapping to attention, clinking, bolting and screwing themselves into place to assemble his latest Iron Man suit of armor around him. A few seconds later, he'd finished suiting up; the final piece, the face visor-plate swooped in, clinked itself into place and sealed itself tight over Tony's face. The holographic display in the apartment switched itself off, the lights returning from their dimmed state to full glare again, as the Heads-Up Display inside the helmet flickered into life and took over the presentation.

"Alright, JARVIS- it's definitely time to assemble the Avengers. As many of them as we can contact, anyhow. I mean, would it have killed Goldilocks to let me tinker around with the Tesseract for a couple of days, just enough time to make an inter-dimensional cellphone to keep in touch with the guy on? _'Course it wouldn't. But nooo_... Oh, and JARVIS, contact Rhodey as well. Since it seems like war's officially been resumed, it's only fair to call that old War Machine into action... And there's no time for fine-tuning or testing either, not now- I'm gonna need all the firepower I have, and then some. Fill in the blanks with improvised best-fits, get the Mark Forty-Four off the drawing boards and onto the assembly line, toute-suite."

"Working on it, sir- done. The blueprints have been finalised, the instructions to the assembly forge have been given, the production line is moving, and construction of the new prototype should be complete within the next eleven hours."

"Good job, JARVIS. Let's just hope and pray that'll be in time to meet this big guy head-to-head before he reaches the coastline and starts rampaging through a big city. This Godzilla rip-off, this Chitauri Kaiju- we didn't invite it here. This here's our planet, and it's trespassing in our oceans. Time to get out our big guns, stroll out across the water and go show this Trespasser what we Earthlings do to hostile intruders when they're messing up our turf..."


End file.
